The invention relates to an apparatus for forming groups of cigarettes by pushing them out in several layers on top of one another from vertical magazine shafts, a gap being formed within the group by retaining an individual cigarette against a stop during the pushing-out movement.
In the packaging of cigarettes, it is frequently or predominantly the practice to work with a cigarette magazine as an intermediate container for a relatively large number of cigarettes aligned in the same direction, but not yet grouped. The approximately funnel-shaped magazine is equipped, in the lower region, with a plurality of cigarette shafts which are limited by thin walls such that a self-contained vertical row of individual cigarettes is accommodated in each shaft. In the lower region of each of the shafts formed immediately next to one another, cigarettes are pushed out in groups, such that a group extracted in this way from the cigarette magazine corresponds in number and formation to the of the cigarette pack to be produced. Pushing-out devices are used to push out the groups of cigarettes, and are equipped with a plurality of tongues each penetrating into a cigarette shaft.
To guarantee a formation of the cigarette group which corresponds to that of the particular pack to be produced, it is necessary to retain individual (or even several) cigarettes in a shaft during the pushing-out of the group. This problem arises especially in the production of conventional cigarette packs with a formation arranged in three rows with different numbers of cigarettes. Here, the middle row conventionally has a smaller number of cigarettes than the outer rows and is shifted transversely so that a "saddle arrangement" is obtained. In the case of this widely used relative disposition of the cigarettes within a pack, when the group is pushed out a lateral cigarette must be retained in the middle layer in the appropriate shaft. For this purpose, it is known to arrange on a shaft wall a nose which projects into the shaft region and which retains an individual cigarette.
The above known design of a cigarette magazine or of the cigarette shafts has, however, many disadvantages. The cigarettes sometimes do not lie in the exact relative arrangement required within the respective cigarette shafts. The result of this is that possibly two cigarettes are retained by the projecting nose. Since one of these is to be pushed out, that is to say is loaded by a tongue of the pushing-out device, considerable constraints arise, and frequently deformations of material which result in lengthy disturbances in the packaging process.